The suit is for "Willingful Infringement", meaning that the Plantiff
believes that the Defendants knew about the patent when making their
products, and infringed on it anyways. For anyone who's tried to start
a business and heard the "DON'T RESEARCH PATENTS" advice, "Willingful
Infringement" is why. Assuming the defendants are found guilty, they
are liable for trebel (3x) damages.

That means a shitload of money.

Right now, the case is super new. Like, filed this week new. This
gives TZU around 4 months to notify the defendants (more for Holland
Haptics, who are actually in the Netherlands so this goes by
international treaty law), after which the defendants have 21 days to
reply.

Judge S. James Otero of the Central California district (one of the
popular districts for trying this kind of thing, alongside East Texas)
has been assigned the case.

Whether this is an offensive move to clear the market of
competing/non-licensing products, or just a shitty troll move, I don't
know. It is possible that HasSex could've retained some licensing
rights when reassigning the patent, but that is unknown since that
documentation isn't public. It is certainly possible to sell a patent
with the ability to license it back, but that is pure speculation for
now. While there's constant talk of troll reform, it's failed pretty
regularly.

One possible good outcome of this would be the establishment of prior
art for teledildonics. Assuming a product created before August 1997
was found, the defendants could file an inter partes review to the
patent office to possibly invalidate the patent (and basically 'pause'
the case while the patent review happened), which would open the field
to all sorts of new products. I've mentioned this in talks and
articles since I started Metafetish, but we'd never really had a test
case until now. And yes I am totally going to act like I wrote that
inter partes sentence myself like I have any clue what I'm talking
about.

Of course, that means the possible bad outcome for this is
obliteration of the market except for the license holders.

I'll do my best to keep this site updated as information comes out.

Holy. Shitting. Fuck.

UPDATE: Ok, a quick update to my "No really I'm not a lawyer
don't take me seriously" theory about why this is happening now versus
any time since I started Metafetish/Slashdong. I don't want to have to
repeat myself in email a bunch so I'm just adding to the article.

The patent in question was filed in August of 1998. That means we're
creeping up on the 20 year deadline for patent expiration. Lawsuits
are not super speedy things, especially considering this is a possibly
international suit.

Suing Vibease, Frixion, Comingle, LovePalz, and Freeble means products
could possibly be taken off the market, reducing competition, which
would be a win for the prior patent holder, though that does once
again speculate they have anything to do with this. The oddballs are
Internet Services, WMM Holdings, and Kickstarter.

WMM Holdings, AKA Real Touch, already had to license some patents,
because they had a product on the market for years that got yanked due
to those patents no longer being offered for license. My guess is that
patent license got taken back because of the Real Touch Interactive
service conflicting with whatever that patent holder may've had
planned otherwise. Why this current patent wasn't litigated until now
seems weird.

Internet Services is, most likely, Immersion. That means tiny
patent troll against medium-ish patent troll. Immersion isn't say,
Intellectual Ventures, but they do own part of everything ever that
vibrates due to another thing happening. They have money. I'm guessing
they may be in the suit for hopes of getting a settlement instead of
their case going to court. (Update 2015-07-23) Internet Services is actually one of
the companies involved in the Real Touch. This is why I should
actually research things.
Thanks to Joe Mullin for writing an article on Ars Technica where research did happen.

Kickstarter? Not a fucking clue. The only reason I can guess they're
here is
the fact they ran the freeble crowdfunding campaign.
However, if they're somehow liable for that (and that may be all they
can be liable for, since they don't allow adult toys on their
service), I don't see how Indiegogo isn't also liable for Comingle. I
would also figure any crowdfunding company that's not stupid would
have safeguards against patent infringement in products they've run
campaigns for. I have no idea how these things work though, so I guess
we'll find out.

The Master Beta kit comes with an arduino, a
bullet vibrator, and a knob for doing simple control experiments.
However, with addons, it can control many other toys, including
Orgasmatronics own X2 Gyrator.

So what are you waiting for?
Go get your early bird kit today
for only $69! The campaign is looking for $5000 overall, and is 20% of
the way there as of this posting, which is hopefully a good sign.

The PussyMeHow Kit.E - A Fake Vibrator for Fake Cats

Luckily, it's not an actual product. It was an April Fools Day joke by
Badoink Magazine. However much I hate AFD and
also the name "Badoink" (Why, yes, my high horse is quite high after
dropping the name Slashdong), it's sex tech related, so, yeah, I'll
post about it.

Apparently the (fake) inventor of the toy owns (fake) female cats,
wanted to help them while they're in (fake) heat, without (fake)
surgery, and now here we (fake) are. It even includes a (fake) vaping
mechanism for putting off (fake) pheromones to get the (fake) cats in
the (fake) mood. Can't say I would have thought of that, even for the
(fake) joke.

So. That's a (fake) thing. Though honestly, I've seen enough (real)
DIY projects over the years similar to this that I could see it being
an actual thing (Yes, that is a cultural critique.). Not to mention,
this isn't the first time we've seen sex toys for pets. Remember
the (actually real) Hot Doll?

Child of Eden Almost had a Rez Trancevibrator of Its Own

You see, when Rez was ported to XBox Live in 2008 (released as Rez
HD), Wireless controllers were far more common. So, instead of making
a new TranceVibrator, they allowed players to use the extra 3
available controllers as just vibrators.

Fast forward to 2011. According to
a Kotaku article from a demo held that year,
the game Child of Eden
was demoed with a peripheral similar to the Rez Trancevibrator. Child
of Eden was set as a prequel to Rez, and utilized the Microsoft Kinect
(and is still one of the few Kinect games I've heard positive reviews
for that wasn't Dance Central). Since that meant all 4 controllers
would be free while players flailed in front of their camera, the
developers apparently made a belt to strap the controllers to. Players
could then have a big, vibrating controller belt while they flailed.
Yay.

Unfortunately I couldn't find any pictures of the belt, and it was not
released with the game. As this blog is as much my notebook as it is
for news, I figured I might as well add this, even though I'm 4 years
late to the story.

I was pretty fond of TranceVibrator, obviously. It was USB, and it
vibrated, and that's about all I needed to get attention back then.
Unfortunately, time has not treated
libtrancevibe quite
so well. The drivers started breaking on Vista, apparently worked on
Windows 7, but are now completely broken on Windows 8 and above. I'm
guessing this is due to the fact that most released drivers were
written in 2006, based on libusb-0.1. We're now at libusb 1.0.19, so
things are due for an upgrade.

Anyways, it looks like they actually outsourced their own
version of the hardware. The
Harnett Technology Solutions USBMC-01
is basically a USB key with a small motor driver, into which you can
plug any vibrator with the usual 2.5mm mono audio jack. As far as I
can tell, this is on only product
Harnett Technology Solutions sells,
too.

Taking a look inside their controller software, it looks like it's a
java application built on top of the Drmn Trancevibe driver code. This
would explain why it doesn't work on Windows 8.

Even so, it looks like Xcite is still selling and using the interface.
Once that goes away (though, as with many things involving Second
Life, it may be oddly immortal), the advent of easier to build/control
arduino toys and other products on the market may mean the end of the
Rez TranceVibrator.